Covered bridge, 49er Faire exceed attendance expectations

BUTTE CREEK CANYON &GT;&GT; The Honey Run Covered Bridge Association raised more money than anticipated and the 49er Faire drew more vendors than ever Sunday.

The bridge association uses the money from its annual pancake breakfast fundraiser to maintain the park, which includes the bridge, a small park area and a section of Butte Creek which is used on hot summer days as a swimming hole. The fair at the Centerville schoolhouse also raises money for maintaining the schoolhouse grounds and the Coleman Museum, located next door.

Honey Run Covered Bridge

Stretched across Butte Creek since 1894, the Honey Run Covered Bridge was already falling apart when a car crashed into the bridge, causing extensive damage to the old wooden timbers.

The first president of the Honey Run Covered Bridge Association, Harvey Johnson, started pancake breakfast 49 years ago, and the association, including current president, Johnson's great-cousin Nick Salermo III, has continued the tradition ever since.

"Our goal this year was just to keep it simple," Salermo said. "But I think we broke a record."

Diners buy a breakfast for $7.50 and the Butte County Sheriff's Office cooks up pancakes, and sausages on the Captain Bob Pancake Wagon for patrons to take inside the bridge to eat.

The fundraiser was expected to make about $2,000, but Salermo said there were more people than ever before and he thought the final cash tally would be close to $3,000.

"All the money pretty much goes into maintaining the bridge," he said.

Amy Raucher has volunteered at the bridge for 23 years, since she was 10 years old.

"A lot of hours go into this place," she said.

Raucher and her husband Byron Shaw are the park's caretakers, working for free to keep the park looking nice.

They recently cleared driftwood and weeds from the area around the river.

"I haven't seen the swimming hole look this nice since I was a kid," Salermo said of the work the couple put into one of the creek's most popular places to swim.

The association is planning on restoring some of the boards on the bridge that need repair and upgrading the bathrooms at the park to make them compatible with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The park recently began renting space for weddings.

With a bathroom upgrade, the park can also provide nicer changing rooms for brides and grooms, Salermo said.

49er Faire

With gold panning, vendors selling old-time goods, musicians playing folk music, a barbecue and a silent auction, the 49er Faire in Centerville was busy Sunday as well, with many people making the short drive up Centerville Road after eating at the covered bridge.

The fair's goal is to raise funds to preserve the schoolhouse, said Darlene Lightcap, treasurer of the Centerville Recreation and Historical Association and a resident of Butte Creek Canyon for 23 years.

The event takes place at the single-room schoolhouse that was in operation until the 1960s.

There were more vendor booths than usual, Lightcap said. This year, event organizers tried to provide more shady areas for booths, and it appeared to have worked.

A silent auction inside the schoolhouse had many works from Butte Creek Canyon artists who donated works for the fair up for silent auction. People strolled through, examining different items before placing a bid and hoping nobody else would outbid them.

In the "Kids Corner" more games were provided this year, Lightcap said, but the ever-popular gold panning station, a large bucket with water, dirt and some real gold flakes where kids can learn how people living in 1849 actually panned for gold.

One popular attraction was Laura Burghardt's spinning station where she showed anyone who wished to learn how to spin wool into yarn.

"I love seeing the young women getting into it," she said as she worked with two women. "Spinning was almost a dying art and now it's experiencing a resurgence."